Over the course of history, radii have been used in innumerable arts and trades. Commonly, fixed contour templates have been and are used in all trades and arts. These templates have been laid out and cut from many forms of material such as card board, light gauge sheet metal, or any semi-rigid or rigid material adequate to hold its shape long enough to produce the desired duplicated part contour. At the end of the production of the desired part, the template is either hung on a peg in the shop, or discarded. The time it takes to make a simple two-dimensional template usually runs into several minutes with the average requiring at least 30 minutes of time. Additionally, each time a template is created, some amount of material is used, which could have been used for other purposes. Generally, these templates are saved for potential future use, but the time it takes to find any one specific template may consume more time than to make a new one. Therefore, they stack up until after hundreds are accumulated, they are all thrown away and the process starts over.
To measure an existing radius, and make a template has been a trial and error process which could be expensive in both time and materials.
Corresponding reference characters indicate corresponding components throughout the several views of the drawings Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various embodiments of the present disclosure. Also, common but well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are often not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments of the present disclosure.